“Our Mission: NBC Learn believes in the power of great stories — historic news reports, original video content, and current events coverage — to engage, inspire and educate K-12 and Higher Ed students.” Among the free resources there are those that deal with the science of sports, chemistry, and environmental issues.

Featured this month is: “Finishing the Dream” — Martin Luther King Jr’s “Dream”

“Current Awareness Services have been published by libraries for a long time. They usually include new books, table of contents alerts, blogs, citation alerts, and other information. JournalTOCs builds on the idea by offering tables of contents (TOCs) for the newest issues of thousands of academic journals via this free website. Readers may type in the name of any journal in the search function on the homepage to access that journal’s latest table of contents. They may also browse by publishers and subjects. For librarians, students, and scholars who want to keep up to date on the breaking research in their field, this is a valuable resource. [CNH]“

“Almost half of the processes that are crucial to maintaining the stability of the planet have become dangerously compromised by human activity. That is the view of an international team of 18 researchers who provide new evidence of significant changes in four of the nine systems which regulate the resilience of the Earth.”

Nine planetary boundaries (the crucial processes)

Climate change

Change in biosphere integrity (biodiversity loss and species extinction)

Stratospheric ozone depletion

Ocean acidification

Biogeochemical flows (phosphorus and nitrogen cycles)

Land-system change (for example deforestation)

Freshwater use

Atmospheric aerosol loading (microscopic particles in the atmosphere that affect climate and living organisms)

A very complimentary review by –J. N. Jeffryes, University of Minnesota

“Scopus’s nearest competitor is Web of Sciencehttp://thomsonreuters.com/thomson-reuters-web-of-science/(CH, Jan’11, 48-2436), and the two tools remain somewhat complementary. For post-1996 information, Scopus comes off as the more impressive of the two with its advanced citation analysis visualizations, wider inclusion of conference papers, and adoption of alternative impact metrics. Because the citation counts and h index calculations go back only to 1996, Web of Science has the historical edge. In the areas of interface design and record readability, Scopus is the stronger tool. It provides an intuitive search format to explore an impressively broad base of research; if the depth of coverage were expanded (or as 1996 becomes more distant), this tool would become even more valuable. Even as it is today, it is a very valuable resource for academic and professional libraries. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above”

The complete review is here: http://www.cro3.org/content/52/05/52-2504.full

Data was obtained from theAir Markets Program Data(AMPD) tool, a publicly-available data system for searching and downloading data collected as part of EPA emissions trading programs. In 2013, about 2.1 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions were attributable to electricity generated from coal.

From Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News, November 15, 2014, p.42, there is a brief description, of highly-rated Periodic Videos. 118 of them have been done, and are being revised by a group of chemists at the University of Nottingham in the UK. Try out this interactive periodic table!

NTIS is launching greater access to federally funded science & technology information and reports. Starting in October 2014, U.S. citizens will have free access to all electronically-available documents in the NTIS collection.

Currently there are more than 850,000 documents digitized for free public access. For the first time, Individuals will have the option to subscribe to the NTRL in order to benefit from the Premium features of the database, such as Digitization-on-Demand (NTRL Premium Individual). Premium Institutional subscribers (including corporations) will continue to have access to the more than 2.8 million records with a variety of enhanced features as listed in the chart below.

The Intellectual Property & Science business of Thomson Reuters has announced a collaboration with DataCite, a global non-profit organization dedicated to enabling people to find, share, use, and cite data. The collaboration will promote the discovery of research data sets through the Data Citation Index, a single-point solution providing access to quality research data sets from multi-disciplinary repositories around the world.

This collaboration will connect the Data Citation Index to high quality research data from repositories worldwide that work with DataCite. This will ensure that the valuable content that has been made citable by DataCite is globally discoverable, properly attributed and reusable by other researchers. As part of the Web of Science – the premier scientific search and discovery platform and industry authority in science, social science, and arts & humanities citation indexes – inclusion within the Data Citation Index will also further DataCite’s mission of increasing acceptance of research data as citable contributions to the scholarly record.

Since creating the Data Citation Index, Thomson Reuters has worked closely with global industry leaders to expand the breadth of research discovery by capturing bibliographic records and cited references for digital research, as well as literature describing research which cites or uses the data, stewarding the accurate identification, attribution and measurement of this growing body of scholarship. The Data Citation Index allows users to gain a comprehensive view of the genesis of research projects and influence the future paths they may take, while minimizing the duplication of work and speeding the scientific research process to keep pace with the changing global research landscape. Through linked content and summary information, this data is displayed within the broader context of the scholarly research ecosystem, enabling users to gain perspective that otherwise would be lost if viewed in isolation.”

“This astonishingly powerful, award-winning database from The Royal Society of Chemistry provides fast access to over 30 million chemical structures and properties, as well as nearly unlimited links and related information. For a quick introduction, go to the About page and watch the ten-minute introductory video. Then start searching! Simple searches expedite your exploration when you enter the trade name, synonym, or systematic name of the compound you wish to find. Conversely, you can input by Structure, with an innovative Edit Molecule function. Lastly, Advanced searches allow you to combine methods. In addition, the ChemSpider blog boasts frequent entries about the site and the field at large. [CNH]“

Source: The Scout Report — Volume 20, Number 33, from the Univ. of Wisconsin